ISSUE THREE
Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.
A tortured simper uncoils itself across my mouth as I open another bottle of Penis wine.
I’d never heard of anyone having a second baby right after the first one, but everything was so strange in those early days of motherhood that I just acted on instinct.
Vistas from the American Southwest, catching the light and design in all its strangeness and beauty.
I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.
My mother has been dead for two hundred and forty-three days. I’ve had plenty of things in my refrigerator for longer.
Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.
Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.
In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote
Taking photographs of my hometown has given me a chance to reflect on people whom I have not valued.
My dad was an inveterate theatergoer in the old country where theatre reigned supreme before the Soviets, under the Soviets, after the Soviets.
I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.
What possible use is this lengthy childhood? Surely there would be a selective advantage in maturing earlier, so children are less vulnerable to predation and mothers are freed up to have more children?
and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place
And then he feels that familiar sensation of drifting—when his body untethers from the material world and he soon dissolves into a fine, floating mist that evaporates into the atmosphere.
Darkness always follows.
None speak of how the streets collide in coarse seams like scars, the fresh cobbles unable to level with the ones shaken from their mortar by uncountable seasons.
Mostly he ate what was put on his plate
snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack
Once a zipper Unzipped
I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…
No matter how you try to ignore it, you look like him. You look like your father.
Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”
On the first day of our new life together, my husband realized that I was not interested in theoretical debate. He said it was okay by him and went out to get some pancake mix.
I count my homes—
those of my scattered youth
the sanctuary of our young family
the intermittent rest stops
of apartments and vacations.
I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.